298 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



motest details is most desirable, but this is the 

 beginning, not the end, of knowledge ; a fact 

 that the professional perpetually forgets. A 

 man may have an astonishing knowledge of 

 men yet know nothing of human anatomy ; and 

 so, too, the amateur may know exhaustively the 

 birds that throng his path from year to year, 

 yet not the number of feathers in their tails or 

 whether they are more properly classified in 

 section C than D of Grand Division A or B. 

 That knowledge that comes to us directly from 

 the field, through eyes and ears, has a value 

 equal to any we can derive from books, even 

 though professionals have written them. 



A serious error on the part of the proud pro- 

 fessional is his contemptuous reception or ill- 

 mannered rejection of information offered by 

 the native of some backwoods region as to the 

 fauna and flora of the locality. As if all the 

 books and museums together could be pitted 

 against the life-long experience of those to the 

 manor born. It signifies nothing that the pro- 

 fessional can show the native no end of objects 

 that he never saw before and can make plain 

 what previously was a profound mystery. That 



